Shinzon's page at Memory Alpha is really interesting. This is what I found intriguing: "In his foreword to J.M. Dillard's novelization of the film, screenwriter John Logan says that he based the name "Shinzon", as well as all the other Reman and Romulan names in the story on ancient Chinese names, in homage to Gene Roddenberry's creation of the Romulans as an analog to 1960's Communist China."

I thought they were a homage to Romans.

--but Gene Roddenberry didn't create the Romulans. Weren't they created by Paul Schneider in "Balance of Terror"? And yes, they were an homage to Romans.

It was only later when the Klingon Empire came along and then it was suggested Klingons were a stand-in for the USSR. Then later again, well if the Klingons were the Soviets, who were the Romulans supposed to be? Well, Communist China? Cuz who else is left? Cubans?

But the Romulans were not designed as a Communist China analog, and they weren't created by GR. What's Logan thinking?